How P/E juices P/B returns

As I’ve discussed in the past, P/B and P/E are demonstratively useful as predictors of future stock returns, and more so when combined (see, for example, LSV’s Two-Dimensional Classifications). As Josef Lakonishok, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny showed in Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk, within the set of firms whose B/M ratios are the highest (in other words, the lowest price-to-book value), further sorting on the basis of another value variable – whether it be C/P, E/P or low GS – enhances returns. In that paper, LSV concluded that value strategies based jointly on past performance and expected future performance produce higher returns than “more ad hoc strategies such as that based exclusively on the B/M ratio.” A new paper further discusses the relationship between E/P and B/P from an accounting perspective, and the degree to which E/P and B/P together predict stock returns.


The CXO Advisory Group Blog, fast becoming one of my favorite sites for new investment research, has a new post, Combining E/P and B/P, on a December 2009 paper titled “Returns to Buying Earnings and Book Value: Accounting for Growth and Risk” by Francesco Reggiani and Stephen Penman. Penman and Reggiani looked at the relationship between E/P and B/P from an accounting perspective:

This paper brings an accounting perspective to the issue: earnings and book values are accounting numbers so, if the two ratios indicate risk and return, it might have something to do with accounting principles for measuring earnings and book value.


Indeed, an accounting principle connects earnings and book value to risk: under uncertainty, accounting defers the recognition of earnings until the uncertainty has largely been resolved. The deferral of earnings to the future reduces book value, reduces short-term earnings relative to book value, and increases expected long-term earnings growth.

CXO summarize the authors’ methodology and findings as follows:

Using monthly stock return and firm financial data for a broad sample of U.S. stocks spanning 1963-2006 (153,858 firm-years over 44 years), they find that:

• E/P predicts stock returns, consistent with the idea that it measures risk to short-term earnings.
• B/P predicts stock returns, consistent with the idea that it measures accounting deferral of risky earnings and therefore risk to both short-term and long-term earnings. This perspective disrupts the traditional value-growth paradigm by associating expected earnings growth with high B/P.
• For a given E/P, B/P therefore predicts incremental return associated with expected earnings growth. A joint sort on E/P and B/P discovers this incremental return and therefore generates higher returns than a sort on E/P alone, attributable to additional risk (see the chart below).
• Results are somewhat stronger for the 1963-1984 subperiod than for the 1985-2006 subperiod.
• Results using consensus analyst forecasts rather than lagged earnings to calculate E/P over the 1977-2006 subperiod are similar, but not as strong.

CXO set out Penman and Reggiani’s “core results” in the following table (constructed by CXO from Penman and Reggiani’s results):

The following chart, constructed from data in the paper, compares average annual returns for four sets of quintile portfolios over the entire 1963-2006 sample period, as follows:

• “E/P” sorts on lagged earnings yield.
• “B/P” sorts on lagged book-to-price ratio.
• “E/P:B/P” sorts first on E/P and then sorts each E/P quintile on B/P. Reported returns are for the nth B/P quintile within the nth E/P quintile (n-n).
• “B/P:E/P” sorts first on B/P and then sorts each B/P quintile on E/P. Reported returns are for the nth E/P quintile within the nth B/P quintile (n-n).

Start dates for return calculations are three months after fiscal year ends (when annual financial reports should be available). The holding period is 12 months. Results show that double sorts generally enhance performance discrimination among stocks. E/P measures risk to short-term earnings and therefore short-term earnings growth. B/P measures risk to short-term earnings and earnings growth and therefore incremental earnings growth. The incremental return for B/P is most striking in low E/P quintile.

The paper also discusses in some detail a phenomenon that I find deeply fascinating, mean reversion in earnings predicted by low price-to-book values:

Research (in Fama and French 1992, for example) shows that book-to-price (B/P) also predicts stock returns, so consistently so that Fama and French (1993 and 1996) have built an asset pricing model based on the observation. The same discussion of rational pricing versus market inefficiency ensues but, despite extensive modeling (and numerous conjectures), the phenomenon remains a mystery.The mystery deepens when it is said that B/P is inversely related to earnings growth while positively related to returns; low B/P stocks (referred to as “growth” stocks) yield lower returns than high B/P stocks (“value” stocks). Yet investment professionals typically think of growth as risky, requiring higher returns, consistent with the risk-return notion that one cannot buy more earnings (growth) without additional risk.


(emphasis mine)

The paper adds further weight to the predictive ability of low price-to-book value and low price-to-earnings ratios. Its conclusion that book-to-price indicates expected returns associated with expected earnings growth is particularly interesting, and accords with the same findings in Werner F.M. DeBondt and Richard H. Thaler in Further Evidence on Investor Overreaction and Stock Market Seasonality.





Greenbackd

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